


Why Laa-Laa Is Not Allowed To Play Near the Console

by Thette



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Teletubbies (TV)
Genre: Crack, Crossover, Gen, total and utter crack, why do the teletubbies have a tardis?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 12:44:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thette/pseuds/Thette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The reason why the Teletubbies have a TARDIS and a dimensionally transcendental bag. Complete and utter crack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why Laa-Laa Is Not Allowed To Play Near the Console

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Perivaleyard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perivaleyard/gifts).



> Takes place between Revelation of the Daleks and Trial of a Time Lord and before the Teletubbies series. My [2009 Finish-a-thon](http://www.katspace.org/Fiction/Ficathons/FinishAThon/2009/Index) story, originally posted [here](http://rosemaryfic.livejournal.com/5904.html) May 27th, 2009. For desdenova on LJ, the Great Enabler, for perivaleyard who shares my brain, and for all the people who voted for this particular crackfic in the Finish-a-thon poll.

"The blue button, Peri. Blue!"  
  
"This one, Doctor?"  
  
"No!" The TARDIS shook, throwing Peri to the floor.  
  
"The other blue button, two rows to the left. Rassilon's robe, Peri, can't you understand simple instructions?"  
  
"Well, maybe I just won't help you when you need another pair of hands the next time." She curled up with her back against the wall, knees to her chest. Ever since his change, he'd been heaping abuse on her, and she'd done her best to shout back. It was like watching dementia eating her grandfather's brain. When she was six, the old man had gone from someone she loved hanging out with during the summer holiday, someone who spoiled her silly to a shrieking, raging, foulmouthed stranger between two summer visits to Iowa. The comparison was unflattering. She watched the Doctor walk around the console, red coat flapping, running diagnostic checks.  
  
"Is anything wrong?"  
  
"Wrong?" He slammed a red button. "Wrong?!" She could hear he was gathering energy for another argument. By now, she could tell the signs. The indrawn breath, the straightened spine, how the volume and pitch of his words went up in three phases as he stoked his own fire over something that wasn't worth arguing about. The only way to avoid it was to break his concentration.  
  
"Yes, Doctor! Wrong! Tell me all about it." Like wind, like water, he switched from full on rage to sarcasm.  
  
"Well, my dear Peri, it seems our flight's been cancelled. We've materialised in the middle of the Orion nebula, not a planet in sight. Do push the buttons I tell you to push."  
  
"I'll push your buttons, all right," she muttered. An incoherent insult if she'd ever heard one, but it felt so good to say it. The screen showed a fantastic cloud in purple and blue. "Oh, Doctor, it's so beautiful."  
  
"Hmm... But something is not quite right..." Intense white light flashed at the bottom of the screen.  
  
"Look over there!"  
  
"Daleks!" She didn't know what else he said, but she could tell he was cursing. He changed the course, letting the TARDIS spin through open space rather than materialising. The flash of light at the edge of their field of vision turned out to be a single Dalek spaceship, scorching a small green planet from orbit. There was nothing left in his face of anger for anger's sake, not a trace in his voice of arguments to pass the time. His grip on the console tightened, and he slammed the buttons and levers hard as they pursued the ship. The way the Daleks fled, they must have recognised the TARDIS. One beam of energy brought them off course, and when the Doctor had regained control, the Dalek ship was gone.  
  
"Time corridor," he said, barely opening his clenched teeth. "They closed the entrance behind them. Slimy metal cowards!"  
  
"Why do you think they attacked that planet?"  
  
"They're Daleks. Bloodthirsty megalomaniac tin pots, always looking to expand their empire of destruction."  
  
"Don't you think we should see for ourselves anyway?"  
  
"You always were too curious for your own good, Peri, but I'll indulge you just this once. We must be very careful, and I don't think we'll find anything out of the ordinary."  
  
When the grind of the TARDIS materialisation had stopped, the Doctor scanned the planet's surface carefully. It took him unreasonably long to give the all clear, Peri thought, but he finally opened the doors. They walked in silence among the charred ruins. The huge domes on the ground and the high spires with bulbous onion tops told her the people who used to live here were fairly advanced builders. Not a single tower was still standing intact. Peri felt the Daleks' destruction closing in on her and she shuddered. Without a word, the Doctor put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned in on him, feeling his silent support. Oh, she missed the comforting words he'd have said if he were his old self. They walked past a park, and the greenery gave her a chance to breathe, a relief among the remnants of the architecture. He offered her his arm instead, and she took it gratefully. Looking around, she could tell the flora wasn't descended from Earth. The dominating large species was not really a tree, more like a flower with multiple stems. The leaves were penniparallel and the flowers were huge and Asteraceae-like. Six petals in bright colours, one flower per stem. She stood still and just breathed. Inhale, exhale, pause. Inhale, exhale, pause. Inhale... and then she noticed she was alone, the Doctor just a flash of red halfway down an alley.  
  
When she caught up with him, she could tell he had a new-found purpose. Sometimes, he stood still, listening, sensing something she didn't sense. The smell of burnt flesh nauseated her. So far, they hadn't seen the corpses of whoever built the towers, just bunny-like small mammals littering the scorched grass, but she knew the builders' charred bodies must be there somewhere. He stopped, feeling the doors. She laid her hands on one, but couldn't begin to tell what he was looking for. Then the next, and the next, until one door, a hidden door to a basement, sang under her palms. It was a tiny vibration throughout her body, a tune she almost knew but couldn't hear, only feel.  
  
"See! I told you there was something here worth investigating!" She rolled her eyes and thought of forcible regeneration. The quicksilver mood, the occasional violent bouts, she could deal with all that, but he constantly took credit for her good ideas in a way almost designed to infuriate her.  
  
He knocked, and somebody opened, just a tiny little crack.  
  
"I'm a friend. I'm a Time Lord."  
  
"Friend," a childish voice repeated, the r not spoken quite right. A being, large and chubby, green with a strange thing on its head, opened the door completely and showed them in. The light was subdued and the walls were decorated with round things, just like in the Doctor's TARDIS. The TARDIS that sang and vibrated... One and one made two in her mind.  
  
"Doctor, why is there a TARDIS here? And how did you know?" Now that she knew what she was looking at, she could tell this was a console room.  
  
"I thought you had figured that out before now, Peri. We Time Lords can feel a TARDIS from a distance, just as we can feel another Time Lord. I haven't discovered a Time Lord here, though. I wonder how these strange creatures gained entrance."  
  
"Dipsy says shh!" The creature, Dipsy apparently, hushed them. In a dark alcove, away from the console, three other beings like Dipsy, but in other colours, stood silently by a bed where an old woman rested. Her long black hair was streaked with white and her brown, wrinkled skin had a faintly gray hue. Peri could tell she was weak, close to death.  
  
"Doctor, I never thought I'd see you here."  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
"I'm surprised you don't know. But then, your ego always was inflated. You could never be bothered to think of your fellow renegades. Did you really think you were the only Gallifreyan who got tired of the stuffy old society, hijacked a TARDIS and ran away? Did you really think you were the only one who chose to dedicate your life to the lesser species? And talking about lesser species, I see you've brought a human here."  
  
Peri was painfully familiar with Time Lord arrogance. She chose politeness over offence.  
  
"Hi, I'm Perpugilliam Brown, but you can call me Peri."  
  
The woman smiled. "Hi, Peri. I see you've met Dipsy already. This is Tinky Winky," she pointed to a purple creature, "this is Laa-Laa," a yellow one, "and this is Po," a small, red one. "They call me the Amba. See, Doctor, it never hurts to be polite." She turned to him, something burning in her eyes, a passion of some sort. "You adopted the humans. Why, I can never tell, warlike creatures that they are, spreading all across the galaxy like a particularly virulent disease. I came to love the Teletubbies. They were extreme pacifists. Geniuses, in a way, but childlike in many others. I love them like the children I never Loomed. I lived here in perfect happiness, only using my TARDIS in emergencies. Until the Daleks came. The Daleks. Always, ever, the Daleks. War forever, both civil war and conquest."  
  
"My condolences," the Doctor said, suddenly sad.  
  
"No condolences are enough. They were after me, and in pursuit, they burned the Teletubby planet to the ground. They got me, finally. One Dalek ray, and it didn't even hit me in the chest. It hit me in the shoulder, but it was enough to trigger a regeneration, and something went wrong. You can clearly see how much wrong." She laughed a weak laugh, gesturing at her frail body. "Can you believe my previous body was young and strong? Can you believe I regenerated just three hours ago? I kept my mind, but I got this frail old body in the process." The Teletubbies held their hands over their mouths, not saying anything but clearly terrified. "There, there, my children. Amba is not upset. Give the Doctor and Peri toast, please."  
  
"Doctor Peri toast!" Tinky Winky said, and started toddling down a corridor. "Doctor Peri toast!" said Dipsy and followed. The process was repeated for the other two. If Peri hadn't heard the other ones say it, she would never have been able to decipher Po's strange words.  
  
"You must help me, Doctor. There are only four of them left. Only four, of an entire planet. They couldn't defend themselves. An entire race, exterminated by Daleks. You can help me save them! I need another Time Lord."  
  
"Amba, please tell me you're not suggesting what I think you are suggesting."  
  
"I am, Doctor."  
  
"What are you two talking about?" They ignored her. Their gazes were locked on one another.  
  
"I can't let you do that. It will kill you!"  
  
"And if you don't, what shall I do? Live out the rest of my regenerations, if I have any after the Daleks killed me, here in my TARDIS, with only four Teletubbies for company. They will die, eventually, and I will be left here to rot."  
  
"But if we do, we could tear the fabric of space and time apart! We will bring the High Council down on our heads, or rather, on my head, since you so conveniently won't be here to take the punishment."  
  
"If we don't, we'll be accessories to genocide. The High Council will surely see that."  
  
"That is some very dubious legal reasoning, Amba, and I say that as the Lord President of Gallifrey. Besides, have you completely forgotten the Laws of Time? What about our precious commitment not to interfere?"  
  
"Doctor, my Lord President," her voice was dripping with sarcasm, "with all due respect, I call bovine fertiliser. I've seen your work all across time and space."  
  
"Tell me what you're talking about?" She shouted, hoping to get through to them.  
  
"The Amba, here, wants to give the Teletubbies a separate bubble universe. She wants us to use our combined forces to rip space and time apart, just to protect these four creatures from the Daleks. And she'll kill herself trying. Tell me, Peri, do you see me making bubble universes to save planets from the Daleks a lot?"  
  
"Do you think it would work? 'Cause I'd be in favor." She had seen Dalek destruction before, on Necros.  
  
"Peri, please look after the Teletubbies for a little while. My contributions to this discussion will be short and negative, but I suspect the Amba will keep me busy for a while."  
  
She followed the Teletubbies down a corridor. It wasn't hard, she could hear their happy shouting from the console room. "Toast!" And an "Uh-Oh!" that didn't bode well. It turned out to be the lever of the toaster that had gotten stuck, and there were piles of toast all over the kitchen floor. "Toast for Laa-Laa," Laa-Laa said. Peri couldn't help laughing. They were so much like human toddlers. She could still hear the Time Lord argument, but somehow, she didn't care about the harsh words and raised voices when she could dance a ring dance with the four Teletubbies. Po's hand in her left hand, Dipsy's in her right, she knew they had to save them, one way or the other. She ran back, arms full of toast, and they all followed her.  
  
"Doctor!" All the way up to the console room, she heard his arguments getting longer and longer. That was usually a sign someone was about to persuade him. "I brought you toast!"  
  
"Toast!" the Teletubbies said, one after the other.  
  
"I got toast," Peri said.  
  
"Laa-Laa toast."  
  
"Dipsy toast."  
  
"Tinky Winky toast."  
  
"Po toast."  
  
"Please, Doctor, you must save them. They're adorable."  
  
He wore his gruff face. "All the things I do for you, Peri."  
  
The Amba smiled benevolently, but wisely refrained from saying anything.  
  
"On one condition. I need to know this is safe for the rest of the universe. Let us all go to my TARDIS for the calculations."  
  
"No need, Doctor. I have it all prepared. Just help me to the star map." Her calm look met his surprised one. "What? Did you really think I've been lazing about for several hours? You shouldn't be surprised that I'm prepared."  
  
The Amba put one arm over Peri's shoulders and one over the Doctor's, and together they carried her towards the console. She weighed no more than a child, and Peri was afraid she'd break one of her bones if she made a quick move. The Amba called up a star map, centered it on a yellow sun with one small planet, and whispered commands to her computer. Equations started whirling across the picture. "Please, Doctor, feel free to double check my math."  
  
"Ye gods and little fishes, you are right! If we do a simple tobacco pouch seal-off the rest of the galaxy will never know it was there. All I need to do is to adjust the neighbouring stars a few degrees to compensate."   
  
"Now will you help me?" Her face shone with excitement, but it didn't last long. "I need more help than I told you about, because the Time Shield is broken. He can't fly on his own any more." She patted the console, a gesture that spoke of a long symbiotic life.  
  
Using the Doctor's TARDIS, a good deal of makeshift circuits and a few superstrong magnets, they towed the second TARDIS to the chosen planet. The Amba didn't speak much during the journey. She sat cross-legged, holding Po's head in her lap, and watched the Vortex on the view screen.  
  
"Uh-Oh!" Laa-Laa stood by the console, hands over her mouth, looking guilty and enjoying her mischief at the same time. The lever she had pulled out lay by her feet and the column's grinding noise had a sudden asymmetry, a lack of harmony that worried Peri.   
  
"Peri! Get those microcephalic bringers of doom and destruction away from my TARDIS now! They need to be in the other one anyway."  
  
Unfortunately, shouting seemed to upset the Teletubby. She cried out and slammed her hands randomly on the buttons. The Amba picked up a red purse and pulled out a ball that was too large to fit in there.   
  
"Dimensionally transcendental," she said with a wink. Peri threw the ball at Laa-Laa, who caught it and laughed.  
  
"Laa-Laa ball!"   
  
Using the ball, she could lure all the Teletubbies over into the other TARDIS. The Time Lords locked TARDIS door to TARDIS door, and positioned themselves on either side. Peri herded the Teletubbies down the corridor into the kitchen, and left them there. She guarded the mouth of the corridor, but didn't think she needed to. She could hear their unconcerned laughter.  
  
"Are you absolutely certain? This is the point of no return."  
  
"I've never been so sure in my life."  
  
"Peri, I need you to keep the Teletubbies in the right place, and to break the contact when we're done. Let's start. Contact!"  
  
"Contact!"  
  
Peri watched them deep in concentration, hands touching slightly. The two columns started moving, but without the usual grinding sound. A golden light began to envelope the Amba, and she regenerated into a young woman with striking brown eyes. The rest of her features were hard to make out over the regeneration glow. The light fanned out in a perfect circle. One breath, two, three for the Amba to recover. She leaned back, high tan cheekbones a stark contrast against the gray background. A short pause, and she let out a scream of pain as she regenerated again. Her new body was a preadolescent child. The light, first fanning out again, drew back into her and with it came what Peri understood to be space itself. The Cloister Bell began to toll, deep tones every other heartbeat. The edge in space came closer and closer to the Time Lords.  
  
Peri pulled the Doctor and the glowing Amba child apart, stumbling with him into his TARDIS as he let go. Without missing a beat, he slammed the button to disengaged the force field that kept the two TARDISes together. "It is time," the Amba said, a resonance in her voice that sounded like a choir of a thousand. Golden light shot out of her eyes as she regenerated, head thrown back, one more time. Her new body was nothing more than a baby's face, glowing like the sun. With one last effort of will, she stitched the dimensional fabric back together with herself on the inside.   
  
Everything stopped. Not a sound could be heard in the TARDIS. The Cloister Bell was silent, the column perfectly still. Peri turned to the Doctor, but didn't know what to say. After a few minutes in silence, she had a question.  
  
"What do you think will happen to the Teletubbies?"  
  
"Oh, I don't know. That rather does depend."  
  
"Depend on what?"  
  
"On just how the Teletubbies reproduce. But frankly, there's a limit to my scientific curiosity. Some subjects are best left unlearned, don't you agree?" Peri wrinkled her nose in disgust at the thought, and the Doctor laughed.  
  
Meanwhile, in Teletubbyland:  
  
"What is that, Tinky Winky? What have you found?" Tinky Winky showed off his find, a red purse. "Is it a bag?"  
  
"Tinky Winky bag!" He opened it, and looked down into the vast interior. "Amba's bag!" The sun laughed and winked at her child.


End file.
